


My Home Is the Birdhouse Behind Your Heart

by dashery



Category: Final Fantasy XV
Genre: Alternate Universe - His Dark Materials Fusion, Episode Ignis Spoilers, Episode Prompto Spoilers, M/M, Soulmates, Spoilers
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-01-15
Updated: 2019-01-18
Packaged: 2019-10-10 13:42:53
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 5,164
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17426981
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/dashery/pseuds/dashery
Summary: To love someone is to make a little room for them inside you.AHis Dark Materialsdaemon fusion AU, starring PromNis. For the PromNis Week 2019 Day 1 prompt: Soulmate AU.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> I use 'anima/animae' in this fic to refer to HDM's daemons, since, y'know, daemons are already a thing in the FFXV universe. Hopefully I've put in enough context for those who haven't read HDM to understand more or less what animae are; if not, my bad. My main divergence from HDM's daemons is allowing the animae here to disappear into their owner's hearts rather than always being physically solid, because gosh dang, there's no way we can fit a zoo like this in a car, no matter how cool the Regalia is.
> 
> I'm also taking something of a different spin on the concept of soulmates, but I haven't gotten to that yet in this chapter.
> 
> This work contains background Noctis/Lunafreya and more or less tracks with the main game.

Arx, Noct’s anima, spent a lot of time as a cat before she settled, and Prompto could still see some feline lines in the curl of her powerful dragon body around his Efta.

“Aw, Noct, does that mean you want to sleep with me? You should’ve said!” He nudged Noct’s elbow as Arx dragged Efta to her scaly chest, both forelimbs locked under Efta’s armpits—or is it leg pits, on a dog? Efta disappeared beneath one car-sized black wing and Prompto grinned. “No need to be shy. Your soul says it all!”

Arx snorted and closed her eyes just as Noct swatted at Prompto, not lifting his gaze from his phone.

“Shut up. Arx, make sure Ef can breathe.”

Arx didn’t so much as blink. “She’s fine.”

“Prommmmptoooo,” whined Efta from beneath Arx’s bulk, claws scrabbling faintly on stone. “Bud, she’s squashing me, I can’t move!”

“You’d be a lot more convincing if I couldn’t hear your tail thump a mile a minute, girl.”

\-----

Before they met Noct, Efta usually took small, brown, forgettable forms, moth or mouse or pigeon. Nothing that would make them stand out. Social invisibility was particularly easy to attain in Insomnia, where animae reflected the architecture. Large. Imposing. Noble. Even in elementary school, when animae flickered through different shapes quicker than breathing, Prompto would have to edge around coeurl cubs and chickatrices spitting at each other between the shoe lockers or stoop below the ridiculous wingspan of an eagle. Never mind that it was unspoken etiquette that big animae shouldn’t materialize indoors but rather stay inside their human’s heart.

In company like that, sometimes even Efta, who took up no space at all in those days, chose to sit silently in Prompto’s chest, a second, unbeating heart.

Back then, it seemed like all he ever knew was the quiet.

\-----

If Prompto’d once thought regular Insomnian animae were big, they were nothing compared to Citadel people’s, the Crownsguard’s and the Glaive’s. Gladio’s Palla was a _garulessa._ She lay placidly right now at the perimeter of the haven, blocking any wind that might disturb the tents, but her eyes were sharp and bright, just like Gladio’s. While Gladio was always warm and friendly when he wasn’t in Serious Business Mode, Palla was unrelenting. Her no-nonsense stoniness was almost scary, except they’d run into enough trouble by now for Prompto to realize at the very worst moments, when loss dogged them and daemons just kept coming, Palla never faltered. She never snapped, never quailed, always stood ready with a gentle stroke of the trunk to soothe Efta’s nerves. Always, Palla’s firm steadiness reminded them all they’d get through this.

He’d seen her comforting Gladio, even, calming him when his temper rubbed brittle and he needed some alone time in the wild. On seeing them, Prompto’s own hand fell to Efta’s skull and sank into her fur, holding on tight, and she leaned against his leg.

Your anima always understood. Your anima was always there, even at your most alone.

Then again, Ignis’s anima could fly so far away from him, it _was_ scary. Of course, Iggy wasn’t a witch, Aristos never went so far they couldn’t see him—or at least, never so far _Ignis_ couldn’t see him—and their trick came in handy for stuff like reconnaissance and frog-hunting and watching the tide of battle. Important stuff. But Prompto always shivered when Aristos would swoop in from somewhere, and all over again he’d realize, no, Aristos wasn’t taking a breather inside Iggy, he was yards and yards away while Ignis went on like he was whole.

“Doesn’t it hurt?” Prompto asked once, fingers deep in Efta’s ruff to hide their white-knuckled clumsiness. “I mean, dude, I can barely go ten feet from Efta without keeling over, it feels like someone’s ripping my lungs out through my ribs!”

“Hurt? Mm. I suppose it does a bit, at that,” Ignis answered, stirring a pot of something mouthwatering while Aristos fastidiously groomed himself. “But it’s nothing so dire we can’t endure it.”

Gladio grunted, amused, and leaned with crossed arms over the ridge of Palla’s back, taking a break from her evening rubdown. “What Iggy ain’t saying is the two of them have worked on that trick for years. What they can do, the distance they got? Nothing less than a decade of the most grueling training you can think of’ll get you there.”

“No thanks!” Prompto said quickly, clutching tightly enough to Efta’s hide to hurt them both. “Most grueling _torture_ sounds more like it.”

“It was hardly that extreme, Prompto, Gladio,” said Ignis, pushing his glasses up. “Some members of King Regis’s Glaive took it much further.”

“You’re Crownsguard, Specs. Not Kingsglaive,” Noct interrupted, lounging so motionlessly against Arx’s flank, Prompto’d thought he was asleep. “Not like you had to do that.”

Ignis turned then to regard him, as did Aristos—twin keen-eyed stares. “No,” he said mildly. “But someone must try to keep up when you and Arx take to the skies as you do.”

Aristos was a daggerquill, and he was beautiful.

\-----

It hurt to go too far from your anima, but keeping them cooped up inside you was uncomfortable, too. Still, Insomnian schoolchildren were encouraged to go as long as they could with their animae hidden within, since so many would settle as creatures too large to fit under a desk—or even inside a classroom.

When he was ten, Prompto noticed that the majority of his classmates’ animae simply stayed small and quiet during class without vanishing entirely. It seemed true across the grade, though they were all nearing the age when their animae would settle on a single form forever. Then it would be sink or swim for those with big animae, who’d have to learn how to get around without knocking the city down as they went.

The one exception to the small-but-outside rule seemed to be Prince Noctis, whose anima, as far as Prompto could tell, was always hidden away within no matter what. Girls and boys with their curious, twitchy-tailed squirrels and snuffling puppies would gather around the lonesome, singular prince until he managed coolly to disengage, hands in his pockets, to seek solitude when Prompto would’ve wanted Efta’s comfort instead. He wondered if the prince was lonely like that, with his anima there but silent in his heart all day.

He couldn’t imagine feeling any other way.

Pryna changed that. She wasn’t anyone’s anima, at least not an anima the way most people had animae, but there was something about her that wasn’t quite _just dog,_ either.

(Later, he learned that Messengers were sort of like the gods’ animae, or maybe the planet’s, souls that weren’t tied to any mortal life. Later, Pryna would die with Lunafreya and her star-white stag Sacredamh, and Prompto would know, fiercely, that that was a lie—that love of her was as strong a bond as any anima’s could be.)

For Prompto just then, Pryna was the first cracking of the window that let the sun and fresh air in. She gave him a day, one perfect day, of something besides quiet, _beyond_ it. That would have been enough, but then the letter came, and in the letter she wrote a request, and the request was really a promise. Noctis. Arx. At someone’s side, loneliness would give way to noise.

Prompto started to run, started to greet the people he met on the way, started speaking to his classmates. Efta stopped hiding of her own accord. At first, the shapes she wore were still small and simple: chipmunk, sparrow, bumblebee.

Then she tried a lamb, and Prompto couldn’t stop petting her, amazed at what she could be. Encouraged, she tested all kinds of cats, long-haired, tortoiseshell, curly-white, tuxedo; she hopped around as a frog, chittered as a ferret. She flew as every kind of bird they knew, and sang as half of them, when they were alone. More than once, she ran alongside him as a chocobo.

But more and more, Efta started to resemble the one who had given them this new, brighter life in the first place, and Prompto was delighted—a little concerned about space, but mostly delighted—when she finally settled as a dog, large and thick-furred, clumsy-looking with paws too big for her long, loping legs.

“Well? Is this okay?” she asked, when she’d finished her moment of self-discovery by sniffing her own butt.

There was so much. Prompto couldn’t unpack it all, everything this said about him—how he must be doglike, somehow, loyal and brave and maybe too eager to please and _beautiful._ He could only see himself in her ungainliness, in her awkwardness as her wagging tail knocked some coasters off the coffee table. Instead of saying anything or even fixing the mess, Prompto dug both his hands into her mottled grey fur, scratching her right behind the ears and working his way down.

“Selfie?” he suggested. “See for yourself?”

“Selfie yourself, my technical self,” she replied, and pushed her head into his non-camera hand for more pets. “But yeah. Let’s take a selfie.”

\-----

It took getting used to, but in the end, Prompto was glad Efta turned out so big, because it meant he didn’t look ludicrously out of place among the others—Gladio and Palla, Ignis and Aristos, Noct and Arx. Sure, Efta was the smallest out of all of them, but so was Prompto, and soon enough they were both holding their own against Eos’s apparently limitless wellsprings of danger. As often as he snapped mid-battle shots of Noct and Arx warping through daemon hordes, Palla trampling MTs like grass for Gladio to mow, Ignis and Aristos skewering a sahagin between talons and spear, he caught Efta ripping out an axeman’s throat, leaping over venom spew, running fleet of foot to someone’s aid.

Sometimes, Prompto didn’t understand how Efta could be part of him, because he could hardly stand to look at himself most days but almost nothing was more beautiful than Efta in action.

Almost.

\-----

Most of Arx’s scales were black, but black the way the night sky is black, which is to say, not black at all, not really. Blues and purples and even greens shone under the veneer of darkness, and every time she moved, she seemed to catch light that wasn’t even there, glittering subtly as Noct’s eyes did at the best moments. She was enormous, with formidable wingspan; and Prompto’s favorite pictures to take of her were from below when she stretched those wings wide. The membranes underneath looked like nothing short of an aurora, and in the right light, at the right time, she seemed night’s beauty itself made manifest.

“Is her name Arx like arc? Like a rainbow?” Prompto asked one day while Cleigne whipped by. They had the top down, Noct was snoozing, and Gladio had just finished his book—some military history, Prompto thought, or historical fiction. Something like that, with lots of royal titles and old-timey names. “Because she’s all rainbowy underneath?”

Gladio looked amused. “Doubt it.”

“No, Arx’s name translates to something like fortress, or citadel,” said Ignis, glancing briefly away from the road. None of their animae fit in the Regalia, of course, but Prompto couldn’t tell if Aristos was there inside Ignis or somewhere else, scouting the way in front of them. Ignis’s gaze flickered to Noct in the rearview mirror, then back to the task at hand. “I’ve myself always thought of it as hope for protection; a wish for Noct’s safety, invoked forever in the name of his soul.”

“…Whoa,” said Prompto, goggling at him.

“That’s deep, Iggy,” said Gladio, eyebrows lifted. “Didn’t know you were a poet. Or does it only come out for His Doziness?”

Noct slept on, unmoved as always by being the topic of discussion.

“I merely agree with most that names are important,” said Ignis stiffly. “And I find their provenance fascinating. Prompto, did you know that _gladiolus_ is a—”

“Everyone knows it’s a flower, Iggy.” Gladio rolled his eyes and leaned forward from the backseat. “Try material that isn’t twenty-three years old and maybe you’ll get me someday.”

Before they could descend into good-natured snarking, Prompto asked, “What about Palla?”

Gladio sat back once more, challenge denied. “Nickname for an old goddess, I think.”

“A derivative of the name of a protection goddess once worshipped in Accordo, yes. Patroness of just war, wisdom, that sort of thing.” Ignis seemed to notice some otherwise invisible flaw in the mirror and rubbed at his jawline. His thumbs were the only fingers left bare in his driving gloves, Prompto noted for the five-zillionth time and turned to the window to watch for photo ops. He drummed his own half-gloved fingers on his thighs to a song Ignis wouldn’t let him play on the radio while Noct was sleeping.

“So why don’t I get a wish for my safety, huh, Iggy? If Palla’s a shield goddess,” asked Gladio, still teasing.

Ignis was no longer bothered. Unruffled, he said, “I rather think she’s a wish for you to be a Shield, Gladio. A reminder of your role and your privilege.”

Gladio grumbled, but seemed happy about it, so Prompto spoke over him. “So is Aristos the same way? His name means ‘advisor’ or something?”

Ignis hesitated. “No,” he eventually admitted, shooting Gladio a warning glare that went grinningly unheeded.

“It means ‘best.’ Like _aristos totalis._ ‘The best of all,’” he explained as Ignis kept his eyes steadily, embarrassedly on the road, wind and afternoon sun in his hair.

Looking at Ignis’s hands as he drove, that bare thumb brushing up and down the leather curve of the wheel, seeing Aristos dive for something out of the corner of his eye, keeping pace with the car from a distance—Prompto repeated _aristos totalis_ in his head and felt Efta shift in his chest, like she was pushing her head gently against his heart.

\-----

Efta, of course, didn’t mean anything. It was just her name, known as long as he knew his own, an insignificant, hurried breath or bark. 


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Me: Oh, yeah, it'll be two chapters, it's fine  
> Also me, 5K in and just completing Altissia: mmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm I h e CK Ed up

Noct lost more than a fiancée or even a friend to the Rite of Leviathan. He lost his soulmate. He lost the last place his heart would call home.

Prompto knew it before Noct woke up, knew it before the anguish could crash down around them like the walls of Insomnia, the statues of Altissia in the storm. He knew it because Arx, as deeply unconscious as Noct, was changed. When they pulled her from the Altar, she was even bigger, wings wider, than before; besides that, she seemed somehow more real, more glorious, more… _more,_ and neither of the earlier Rites had transformed her in this way. Before, she had hoarded a night sky beneath her wings. Now, galaxies seemed to spill out when she unfurled.

Most striking, though, was that wherever she rested for long enough, sylleblossoms began to grow. And now, at her brow, she bore a single, star-silver antler, delicate and regal as the Lucian crown.

Noct took it badly.

It was worse.

In the chaos, Ignis was—Ignis got—something injured Ignis so badly, they weren’t sure he would ever see again. It wasn’t a cosmetic injury, and it wasn’t even just— _“just”_ —Ignis. Aristos, best Aristos, their lookout and their scout, Aristos with his brilliant blue-and-copper plumage and downy white belly—the damage carried over to Aristos, too. Unlike Ignis, his eyes were intact, but maybe. Maybe this was worse.

His wings were broken. And the bright, eye-catching multicolored feathers of a healthy daggerquill had washed out until Aristos was a watery blue-green all over—as if Altissia, as if that stormy terror, as if whatever it was Ignis had endured to reach Noct’s side would stain him evermore.

While they waited for Noct and Ignis to wake up, Gladio paced, confined within the Leville as uncomfortably as Palla in his heart, and Prompto sat at one bedside and then the other, stroking Efta’s head, only listening to her whispers of comfort when her words stopped.

When all was silent.

\-----

Ignis seemed to rouse a few times, but pain and medicine quickly dragged him back under where restless, disturbed sleep could do its healing work. Aristos, ever elegant and graceful before now, squawked in his sleep and struggled pitifully and briefly against the splints keeping his wings still.

It was unthinkable, of course, to touch anyone else’s anima. That was part of their _soul,_ not something others could infringe upon. Every time the healers left, though, Efta would hop onto the bed to lie beside Aristos, becoming a solid curve of warmth at his side. Sometimes, she would lick his head. Sometimes, she would just stay still, watching Prompto without a word.

Sometimes, Prompto would lower his head and look at his half-gloved hands.

It was unthinkable to touch anyone else’s anima.

Prompto had done something unthinkable.

\-----

When they found Ignis and Noct, Aristos and Arx lying in the rain on the Altar of the Tidemother, Prompto almost _thought_ something unthinkable before he remembered that, when someone dies, their anima disappears. Aristos and Arx were there. Ignis was awake, breathing harshly, when he looked. But he barely managed three words to Gladio before he passed out, and Noct wasn’t moving, and he and Efta were frozen with panic, and Palla wouldn’t even _fit_ on the remaining Altissian footpaths. That beautiful, ruined city, gone with Ignis’s eyes. With Aristos’ flight.

Gladio went to Arx. She was glowing with a soft, golden light that made Prompto’s throat gum up and his eyes brim wetly, and Gladio knelt in front of her, one hand on one knee.

“Up, Arx,” he said, gruff and stony and raw with grief. “Noct needs you. Keep him safe.”

Arx stood as if in a dream with strength that wasn’t hers. With a few sharp words that stirred Prompto into motion again, Gladio manhandled Noct onto Arx’s back and, without touching it, tied the Ring of the Lucii on a cord around her neck. She wouldn’t let either fall. Duty seen to first, Gladio scooped Ignis up with tenderness at odds with the horror and fury on his face.

Prompto had never seen Ignis so still as he was, cradled in Gladio’s arms. He looked so vulnerable. So small.

“The Leville,” ordered Gladio.

“W-what about Aristos?” asked Prompto, teeth chattering.

Gladio grimaced. Every second they wasted here washed hope down the gutter. “If he can’t move, he’ll go back into Ignis when we’re far enough away it starts hurting.”

“But—”

“It’s the least painful way, Prompto! What, you want to wait while maybe Iggy bleeds into his own lungs?!” Gladio’s vehemence pushed Prompto back a step; his face was a mask of anguish more than anger, but even that was wild, dangerous. Gladio ground his teeth and pushed past at a fast clip, Ignis’s legs dangling over his arm. “Just—let’s go, there’s no time for this.”

Arx limped wordlessly behind him, keeping Noct from slipping off with her wings raised partway, like walls that could keep the bitter reality from crashing in on him. Efta started after them, then looked back.

Prompto still stood next to Aristos, hands pulled indecisively to his chest, shaking so hard with what he was about to do, he couldn’t see straight. For once, Efta didn’t come to him.

“Prompto,” she murmured, and he couldn’t tell if she was approving or appalled. His own anima. His Efta. He couldn’t hear his own heart beat.

With every long step Gladio marched, he drew Ignis farther away from Aristos.

Prompto squatted on the wet stone of the altar and yanked his gloves off so the skin of his palms was bare. Without transition, Efta was at his side again, soaked fur plastered to her skull, looking ragged and pitiful and too big to suit the expression. The sight of her yanked at Prompto’s already wretched heart.

“It’s—I, I can’t…” Prompto stammered, realized what he was saying, and bit his lip. He was trying to rationalize a sin so great, he didn’t even have a word for it; worse, he was asking absolution from the one he was going to hurt most. This, what he was going to do, it was _betraying Efta._

She said nothing, and Prompto thought she wouldn’t. She wouldn’t stop him, but neither would she give him permission, and that was fair. It hurt him like crazy, but it was fair, and he took a deep breath and tried to focus on Aristos through the mindless chant in his head: _I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’m sorry—_

“Do it,” said Efta and hid her face in his side.

\-----

At school, a rumor went around that the Kingsglaive, who appeared on TV sometimes, were men and women who had touched the King’s anima, and that’s how they were able to use so much of his magic. Others said, no, that was part of the Crownsguard oath, so whatever the Glaive did, it had to be way more extreme. Maybe, giggled some girls in the back, they had to _kiss_ Karaliene, and that sent the whole classroom a-titter.

It turned out that human-to-anima touching wasn’t part of the Crownsguard oath at all, to Prompto and Efta’s relief (and disappointed curiosity). Noct only clasped Prompto’s hand while Arx exhaled something into Efta’s lungs, and they said some formal old stuff, and then Noct put a hand on his head and told him to get up already. Then they had magic. Later, Efta made a comment about dragon breath and Arx sat on her.

It was cool, making Noct’s comic books vanish in and out of existence. Kind of like animae coming back inside, when they thought about it, and it stopped being weird after that.

They never did ask how the Glaive did it.

\-----

Now, Prompto flattened his trembling hands against his knees and said, “Aristos.”

Even this, speaking to Ignis’s anima without him there, felt… dizzyingly wrong. It was a gross, presumptuous kind of intimacy, like catching Ignis naked—worse than catching Ignis naked. Prompto was talking directly to his _soul._ Nothing got more naked than that.

He swallowed, aware of the seconds sluicing through his fingers like water, and bent over Aristos’s head, shielding him from the rain. “Aristos, buddy, it’s—it’s me. Prompto. A-and Efta.” Prompto lifted his bare hand and held it over Aristos, hovering without touching. So close to Aristos’ face, fiercely defined even in unconsciousness, his fingers looked soggy and shapeless. Stupidly, he was afraid Aristos’ colors would run if he touched him, the precise ridge of his eye, line of his throat would blur into the grey.

Time skipped, rewound, played the unthinkable thought again.

If he touched him.

If he, Prompto, touched Ignis’s prone anima.

His arm shook hard enough it was practically jerking itself away from the wrong he was about to do. But no matter how Prompto blinked the rain away, overlying the drenched, broken-looking figure of the daggerquill like a double exposure, he saw Ignis. He saw his proud plumes of hair clinging limp and lifeless to his temples; he saw the drawn exhaustion, the chest that struggled to rise with wheezing breath, the pain—the terrible ash-caked weal clawing across his eye and the reddened lines beneath that _looked like pain itself_ made real.

He saw that, and saw that utterly devastated, worn face tighten with further pain, saw Ignis, their Ignis, calling out blindly for his heart while they tore it from his chest—

“Aristos, please,” Prompto begged, and, because they had no more time to lose, squeezed his eyes shut and pressed his ungloved palm to feathers and skull.

It felt like lightning. It felt like fire. Prompto gasped as a sensation too fierce and fast to be warmth and too gentle to hurt flooded through him, starting where his bare skin met another man’s soul. Then there was no time for gasping, and his second hand joined the first, supporting Aristos’ great head and lifting it carefully into his lap. At some point, he must have found his knees. Efta let out a low, wounded sound beneath his arm.

“Pl-lease,” he repeated, stroking back soaked feathers with tender desperation. Each point of contact with Aristos tingled, more than tingled, shook his voice apart. Shivering no longer consisted of individual tremors for Prompto but was his constant state of being. “Please, just—come on. Come inside, Wonderbird.”

Somehow, he found it in him to bend further until the crown of Aristos’ head met his chest, setting off sparks, cool fireflies, the softest of earthquakes in Prompto’s body.

“You’ll be safe here,” he whispered as he curled one arm protectively around Ignis’s anima’s drooping head, and, sucking in one huge, shuddering breath, he imagined a space inside himself big enough to spread wings.

From beak to tail, Aristos was almost three feet longer than Prompto was tall, and he weighed at least thirty pounds more. Prompto had no other way to carry him. He had no way of knowing this would work, even—it was insane to try, to even think he could hold someone else’s anima inside the way he’d held Efta all his life. But ever since they’d started this journey—ever since Pryna led him to Noct and the others, ever since his first brush with magic—impossibilities flew by like the scenery. And what was most impossible, anyway, was—

What just couldn’t happen, it was—

Eyes closed, body folded like wrapping paper around Aristos, all Prompto could see was Ignis, smiling; Ignis, back to back with Gladio with polearm in hand; Ignis before coffee, Ignis reverse-sneaking peas back onto Noct’s plate, Ignis pushing up his glasses by both corners of the frame, scathingly mild. Ignis smirking, Ignis ice-cold murderous, Ignis with red-rimmed eyes that terrible, sunny morning in Galdin Quay when the world collapsed around them. Ignis in profile, dawn’s light limning his nose and forehead with rose-gold, the wind pushing back his hair like a careless hand as they drove beneath the open sky.

Ignis, totally wrung-out, hurt, and still, twisting suddenly in Gladio’s arms when they crossed that line, when the tearing pull between man and anima finally ripped through unconsciousness’s last defense. Ignis coming to with a cry. Ignis waking up, as no human being ever should, _alone._

It was a million times more possible to fit himself around Aristos than it was to let that happen. Not to Iggy. Not to the best of all of them, when he’d already suffered so much on his own.

Prompto smoothed Aristos’ feathers down his neck one more time and knew it should have been Ignis’s hand instead of his own. He remembered it on dark leather, the pad of the thumb brushing absently up and down the inside of the Regalia’s wheel, as though fond and familiar and assured of its domain—the Hand of the future King, executing with perfect control every duty before the Crown.

He imagined pulling that hand away from the wheel and trapping it against his chest, pressing palm to palm, knuckles to collarbone, fingertips to his lips as he curled around it—and felt Aristos stir slightly.

Suddenly, the sodden weight of him lifted from his arms, and something as heavy and bright as the core of a star settled behind Prompto’s sternum, burning fusion-hot, filling his chest to more than bursting.

He rocked forward, gasping, empty arms crashing into his breastbone, and would have fallen without Efta’s head pushing him back onto his heels. Aristos burned inside him like thunder and flame, pushing at human walls built too slender to hold him, but Prompto gasped again and scrambled to his feet, head tipped back, stretching his lungs as full as they’d go. After an agonized second poised on the brink of failing, of exploding, something eased—Aristos settled, or his body acquiesced a millimeter more. Prompto staggered, took a breath that stopped the stone from tilting under him, and found himself still standing.

Ignis’s anima beat inside of him, and now he could feel how guttered his heat was. How Aristos was worn almost to nothing. Prompto pressed his fluttering hands to his shirtfront and pretended his heart was a shield he could pull down in front of that still-overpowering warmth, the softest protection he could offer. Stuff still seemed to leak around it, but when he opened his eyes, the glowing drops of gold he was imagining escape him were nowhere to be seen.

It would be enough. He’d be enough to carry Ignis’s heart with him to safety, where the two of them could rest.

Prompto took a shuddering breath and turned to stumble after Gladio. “Let’s, l…let’s go.”

Hopefully Gladio wouldn’t notice what he’d done. If he did, the big guy said nothing, pressing onward with both their friends in his care like a warrior angel. He only looked back to make sure Prompto was following, nodded grimly, and continued to hurry forward. Shelter. Quiet. As the Imperial fleet withdrew from the storm-wrecked city, those were their top priorities.

Efta padded alongside him, so close every step he took brushed her flank, but he could still barely feel her when he was so suffused with fire, with clear purpose, with Aristos—with Ignis. With each stride forward, he felt his insides shift to accommodate Aristos, felt the heat of him begin to comfort as well as burn. Even so weary, he was still so strong. As long as he held him like this, Prompto could be nothing less.

“You’re crying,” Efta murmured, and only then did Prompto register the warmth spilling down his face as tears, not light.

“It doesn’t hurt,” he told her, lying. It hurt, but it was a good hurt. It hurt the way longing did, pining away for something, except with Aristos inside the yawning want was fulfilled—over-filled—the second it arose. For the first time ever, with another man’s anima charging his breath with living lightning, Prompto felt more than whole.

And, as he took in the sad look on Efta’s face, he realized his own anima would never find her way home inside him again.

“Prompto?” Sensing something wrong, Gladio started to turn.

Prompto inhaled to steady his legs, to keep himself afloat above the coming devastation, and removed his hands from his heart so gunmetal could fill them instead. “Let us take point, big guy. You’ve got your hands full,” he said, hurrying ahead with Efta bounding at his heels.

Like Aristos had soared ahead to flush out danger, Prompto watched the paths ahead of them, all sound drowned by the maelstrom inside him.

_I’m sorry. I’m sorry. I’m sorry._

And he wasn't sorry. He couldn't be, with thunder singing beneath his skin.

Like all Altissia’s survivors, Prompto swallowed the storm, and it was the most glorious thing yet to destroy him.


End file.
